


Isn't it strange

by Emilia206



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies), The Hunger Games (Movies) RPF
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Canon, Depression, District 12, F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, One line of dialogue, Outdated I know, Panem, Post-Book 3: Mockingjay, References to Addiction, References to Depression, Seasons, Slow Burn, Songfic, Sorta has a happy ending, katniss and haymitch get drunk on occasion, some more angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29502006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emilia206/pseuds/Emilia206
Summary: Peeta returns home from the Capitol and plants the Primroses, Katniss and him have a conversation of about fifteen seconds. That’s the last conversation they have for almost a year. Follows Katniss as she goes through a lot of different phases of mourning, grieving and healing. Split into the four seasons of the year. If you haven’t yet noticed I’m god-awful at these summaries. Buttercup has a starring role? Just read it. I’m pretty sure this summary is just putting people off, I’ll re-write this at some point.
Relationships: Buttercup & Katniss Everdeen, Haymitch Abernathy & Katniss Everdeen, Katniss Everdeen & Greasy Sae, Katniss Everdeen & Peeta Mellark, Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	Isn't it strange

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has literally been on my mind since I first considered writing fan-fiction. It's a songfic inspired by Celeste's song Strange, do yourselves a favour and give her a listen. It really does set up the fic nicely. Also the song just has you in the feels.
> 
> Also big love for my girls who beta'ed and proof read this before I posted it: Starlight_Wren, who has all the Johanna fics you never knew you needed, and audreyoctopus, who writes things that will either make you sob or just straight up jealous of her abilities. 
> 
> I don't really know what else to say, so imma let you get to reading the actual fic.

_I tried for you_

_Tried to see through all the smoke and_

_It wouldn’t move_

_What could I do?_

_I touch your hand to pull your thoughts_

_Into my hand_

_But now I can’t_

**Spring**

Sometimes I think to myself how strange it is, that now I’m the one watching him. Looking on from afar, stalking. I have many places where I like to observe him; an upstairs window, a neighbouring tree, up on the rooftops. He used to look over to me and give me the smallest of smiles, never revealing what he was thinking. But now I can sit up here for hours and he’ll never once look my way. He knows I’m up here, that much I know.

I watch as he prunes and waters his garden, pulls up the weeds, flings the dandelions by the roots, into the distance. Days like those, I don’t sleep well.

Sometimes he’ll hide in his house for days, and I’ll have to make do with the muffled crashes and bangs coming from within his house. Days like those, I make myself scarce, hide in the woods.

All I do know about what he thinks of my silent vigil, is that he misses it when I’m gone. Some days, I’ll disappear off into the woods for days at a time, moving deeper into the lush greenery than I ever have. Shimmying along steep mountain ridges, and lying looking up at the sky from valley meadows. Those are good days. I can escape from being Katniss Everdeen and just wander aimlessly through the wild foliage, making flower crowns out of dandelions and wild rue. Other days, I’ll find myself lost within my own mind, tiptoeing along the edge of insanity, terrified of the spiral. At night lying under blankets upon blankets, in the valleys of my grief. When those days happen, I’ll see him, and somewhere I acknowledge in the recesses of my mind that he’s knocking on my door. 

By the time I’m back at my vigilant post, watching as he works the earth, or potters around the kitchen, he’s back to being him. What that is exactly, I don’t know. It’s like he’s lost behind this haze of smoke, and try as I might, I can’t sift through it. I can look back and watch as he cuddles me into him on a cave floor, as he shakes me awake from the terrors in my head, as he carries me up to bed, stays with me, stands with his arms wrapped around me kissing down my neck… my eyes never fail to burn with tears that I refuse to shed. Gone are the days where I could read him like a book. Maybe I never could though, maybe he was always lost behind a screen of smoke and I was just too self-centred to notice it. 

So, when I watch him from my window, I think to myself, isn’t it strange that I’m finally paying attention?

* * *

_Say_

_Isn’t it strange?_

_Isn’t it strange?_

_I am still me_

_You are still you_

_In the same place_

_Isn’t it strange?_

_How people can change_

_From strangers to friends_

_Friends into lovers_

_And strangers again_

**Summer**

I can’t watch him as regularly anymore. The sun is too hot and he only ever comes out to water his plants in the evening. I spend my time at the lake my father showed me, and at another I found in my ventures in spring. I swim in the midday heat, and eat the fish I caught, in the twilight. Something about it reminds me of the Quarter Quell arena, which happened just a year ago. It’s just me now, just me with my own thoughts. In an awful way, it’s what I always wanted. What’s even worse is that I love it.

As the summer wears on, I spend more days in the woods than I do in the village. The days that I am in the village I spend my evening with Haymitch, getting so intoxicated that we find ourselves howling with laughter at the most mundane things. I’ve never seen Haymitch laugh like he finds something funny. It feels weird and out of place. Then again, everything in my life feels out of place, like I’m living through some weird fever dream. By the time it’s morning, I’m left only with weird memories of spinning rooms and rolling floors, the faint _crack_ of a fresh bottle opening, and an odd feeling of the whole world careening on its axis as I fall onto Hamitch’s lumpy couch.

Sometimes, when I come back from a week in the woods, I’ll find a few loaves of bread moulding on my doorstep, the sweltering heat forcing it to decay faster and attracting flies. I guess it’s a sweet gesture, but I can’t find it in me to care when I’m the one who has to throw the foul smelling thing in the bin. Greasy Sae still comes round to feed the cat her old food, not that he’s around much either. He’s made a habit of following me into the woods — I can’t complain though, he’s still a great mouser, and his nose is superior to mine. 

My anger at the world baffles me sometimes. I don’t really have anything to be angry at anymore, but it’s still there, flickering away. At first, coming to the woods had been an opportunity to lick my wounds, but now I find myself venting my rage out on some poor bush or shrub, or hacking it out on a tree that’s probably been around since before the Dark Days.

There isn’t really a way to describe the faint annoyance I feel when I see that the loaves of bread have started to arrive on my kitchen countertops, or a way to voice the anger I felt when I saw that a painting had been hung up on a wall in my living room, and most confusing of all, the pure hatred I feel when I walk past the flower bed of primroses. I think it’s because I’m angry at him, for ignoring me, after everything we’ve been through. And then he just swoops in painting, baking, and planting things for me, without actually saying anything to me. 

Since the springtime, a lot has changed, but in an odd way, nothing has at all. I’ve made a series of horrible choices, from throwing a beautiful painting at a smug-looking Haymitch in a fit of rage, to yanking out the delicate primrose flowers and flinging them by the roots at Peeta’s house. 

Again though, nothing has changed, not really. He continuously shows that he is bigger than my little temper tantrums, and paints a new painting that is so breathtaking I don’t have it in me to throw it out the back door. Instead, I take it down from the living room wall and throw it into _her_ room, before slamming the door shut. He painstakingly replants the salvageable flowers, and I hurry past them like nothing happened. 

I regret it all, because those gifts were made specifically for _me_ , nobody else could ever really understand the significance of the row of flowers by my house, or comprehend why I felt so cheated when I saw the painting of a sun rising through the valley that I have watched many a time from my rooftop, or how it breaks my heart that somehow after all this time he remembers the lyrics to The Valley Song, that was written in delicate calligraphy in a paint that seems to only appear when the sun shines directly on it, over the painting. It’s all too personal. Even the loaves of bread which I’m sure are rotting away in my kitchen, and it fills me with an overwhelming sense of guilt, shame, anger, hatred, and _fear,_ because all these actions are so inherently _Peeta,_ and what I’m doing is so inherently _me_ that I can’t help but hope just a little that things are going back to normal, and that maybe one day he can forgive me for everything I’ve done. 

So when I stand on the rocky edge of a mountain ledge, looking down into the valley as the sun rises, I watch as District 12 comes to life. People the size of ants scuttling around the building sites for the new Town Square, and further up in the hills, Victors Village. It looks fresh and new, and I know that deep down I don’t belong in this cleaned up District. My home was the District covered in coal, the District that reeked of desperation and hunger, I had purpose then. I don’t anymore, I can wander these woods for ages and no one will miss me, no one will know I’m gone. 

It isn’t a conscious decision I make, but it’s one that I know I’ll stick to. I take a long look at District 12 before walking away, determined in getting as far away as I possibly can. I know that they’ll think I’ve run away, but I don’t think I am. I’m leaving, in every sense of the word. There’s no place in this new world for me, not even in the one person who promised he loved me. Tigris’ words come back to me from those fateful last days in the Capitol: “ _No one knows what to do with you girlie.”_

* * *

_Back to this room_

_Back to our roots_

_What did we lose?_

_What did we lose?_

_If I could I’d pull your strings_

_For one more dance_

_But I can’t_

**Autumn**

Summer comes to its end before I can even comprehend that it has. I trudge through the woods and begin to recognise more and more places that I remember from when I came here with my father, though the leaves are beginning to fall, and make everything look the same. Game is starting to get sparse, and I know I have to make it back to Twelve soon. I may have gotten exceptionally good at hunting again, in the months I’ve been away, but even I can’t stay out here all winter. 

As I begin to slip and slide on the muddy banks of my father’s lake, I wonder whether anyone was actually worried about me, if they thought I was dead. I would have, if anyone else had spontaneously disappeared with no trace. Well, I suppose I did leave a small trace behind, because Buttercup managed to find me. I guess he really is the only one who genuinely cares about me _staying alive,_ as Haymitch used to put it, though I have an inkling that he only sticks with me for the entrails I feed him. 

As the cat scampers on ahead, knowing where we are headed now, I realise how much fuller his fur looks, and that he doesn’t look so ugly anymore, though his fur by no means matches the colour of a buttercup, it looks more like a murky orange with streaks of muddy yellow. I know from looking at my reflection in babbling streams and little brooks, that my own hair is looking a lot healthier and thicker. When I last bathed myself, I realised with some satisfaction that my scars had begun to fade, they’re still there, obviously, but they don’t look as horrendous as they used to. _I_ don’t look as horrendous as I used to. My body has started to fill out properly, now that I don’t have to share my food with others, and though I’m still not very voluptuous in chest size, I’m definitely more curvaceous. I’ve never been one to focus on my appearance much, but the thought that I have been able to somewhat heal by myself fills me with a sense of pride.

By the time I’m crawling under the still standing fence, the ground everywhere has turned so slippery, I'm struggling to not fall. The last few days have been gruelling. It rained twice, heavily, and I got caught out in it both times. I’m surprised that I haven’t come down with pneumonia yet, or died of hypothermia. I can tell that this winter is going to be harsh. I’m glad that I made the decision to come back here. Buttercup is looking about ready to go into some sort of coma. He looks _that_ tired. Miraculously, he waits for me - as I struggle through the flooded meadow. I’m a little afraid that it might swallow me up and I’ll have to join the bones underneath. I think he might be trying to show gratitude for the times I tried to shelter him from the bucketing rain. 

When I finally make it onto the main road, my feet are soaked through, and my boots and trousers are caked in dirt. I’m not sure I love mud that much anymore, it has certainly been helpful to me many times in the past, but it’s beginning to get on my nerves.

I’m just about to walk back to the village, when I hear the sound of music and chatter and — laughter? The thought of laughter still existing in this shattered world is absurd to me, and I have to wonder whether I might just be hallucinating these sounds. When I hear someone begin to sing a song native to District 12, my curiosity becomes all too powerful, and I find that my feet change direction of their own volition and start to take the path into what I know used to be the town square. Buttercup meows in protest, and I shoo him away with a wave of my hand. He gets the message and slinks away towards my house, whilst I continue on the downhill slope, that is somehow also coated in a thin layer of mud.

I haven’t seen or been in the town square since I had to do those god awful propos for Thirteen, and I’m a little scared of what I will find. I’m still not entirely convinced that I’m hearing or thinking straight, and a part of me thinks that it might still just be ash and bones and rubble. Nonetheless, when I manage to skid my way down the rest of the road, I can see that the new inhabitants of twelve have been busy. Very busy. Whilst I was hiding away in the woods, running from this new world that I accidentally helped create, they rebuilt the entire town square, which can’t have been an easy feat in the sweltering heat of summer. Though the square looks relatively the same, a little cleaner, there is one glaringly obvious difference. People. They, it seems, have come from _everywhere._ To live here, or to celebrate what looks like a revival of our traditional harvest-fest, I don’t know. 

These people dance in familiar jigs and dances to the music that is being played. I don’t recognise the man that is singing. I guess he was taught the songs by the musicians. I recognise the fiddle player, and I can see Greasy Sae handing out small bowls of stew. I wonder if there’s proper butcher’s meat in there. The place looks alive and charming, and I feel just a little bit like a gate-crasher. I guess I am, in a way. I’m definitely not dressed for the occasion, that’s for sure. The women and girls here are all dressed in colourful frocks, that sway against their legs as they dance. I’m caked in mud and dirt, and I’m pretty sure my fingers have gone blue with cold. I get an overwhelming feeling of deja vu, _I just don't belong._ I scan through the people dancing, and immediately find the mop of ashen blonde curls I’ve been most nervous to see, wondering if he was at all concerned with my whereabouts. I want to tell him I’m sorry, for the way I acted, and for just leaving, and I start making my way towards him. I take one step into the crowds before realising that he’s busy. Busy twirling a girl, a woman, pretty and with startling green eyes. I might have stopped looking like a walking corpse, but I in no way can compete with this beauty. Unscarred, in every which way imaginable.

I turn on my heel, ready to make another swift escape, and plan on having a nice hot bath, before curling under my covers, and waiting for this year to finally end. The idea of being clean and warm becomes really appealing, and I start to scramble up the hill. I’m in such a hurry that I almost bump into him. Haymitch. Standing on the outskirts of the warmth and charm, just like I am. One look into his eyes, and I know it, I know it without him even having to say it. Just like old times then. Or not, because I swear I’ve never seen Haymitch look so worried, and angry, and relieved at the same time. He was worried then, about if I was alive or not. I put my little counter up to two. An ugly cat, and a surly drunk. I shrug my shoulders at him, trying to tell him that I’m fine, I’m OK, I’m actually doing well. And I think he understands, because the next thing I know he’s hugging me. It’s not like with Peeta, where I felt safe and warm, it’s more like an affirmation for the both of us, that we’re OK. When he releases me, we stand shoulder to shoulder observing the happiness in front of us, neither of us brave enough to join. 

It feels like we stand like that for hours, not talking, just watching. I find myself transfixed with the children. Running in between the legs of the dancing couples, playing, laughing. What children should be like. Even when my father was alive, I was never like that. Nobody was ever like... _that._ I know I should be feeling proud, or something along those lines, that I helped make this a possibility, but all I’m feeling is jealousy. Jealousy of these children, who will never have to experience my pain, my terror, my confusion and guilt. And then I’m angry. Angry at the people who took this away from me, angry at everything and everyone, to the point where I think I might start crying. As if on cue, Haymitch produces his flask, and takes a sip before handing it to me and shoving me into the hubbub, before stomping away.

I can’t think of anything to do, I don’t know these people, and the ones I do know are busy, definitely too busy to tend to my sullen ways. So I do the only thing I can think of doing, I clamber up onto the roof of what I think is the new sweet shop, and observe the happy dancing. Mostly I observe him, smiling and dancing with _her_ . Only ever _her_. He deserves this, and so do I. But a small part of me wishes that he would notice me, and then I could ask him for just one more dance, but I know I can’t. It’s not allowed anymore.

I don’t stay for long. My limbs get stiff with cold, and I find myself fantasising about that nice hot bath more and more. Nobody has noticed me yet, and I intend to keep it that way, but as I slowly slide myself off of the roof, a shingle comes loose and shatters on the floor below. Everyone turns to look at where it came from, and their eyes fall on me, including his bright blue ones, I drop to the floor with a grace I didn’t even know I possessed. As I stand on the pavement, I begin to feel more and more like a trapped animal, the music has stopped, and nobody moves or talks. I think they might be afraid of scaring me away with any sudden movements. But I’m not an animal, I remind myself, so instead of sprinting away like I want to, I turn and start making my way up the hill, in the slowest gait I can manage. As soon as I know they can’t see me, I start running. It isn’t long after that I hear their sounds of happiness and contentment following me.

* * *

The rest of Autumn is weird. I go into town sometimes to trade squirrels or rabbits, but the fresh meat I can find is sparse, and I usually end up keeping it for myself. I get the feeling that nobody really knows what to do with me. I don’t even know, so I guess it’s not their fault. Everyone is polite and nice, but to a sickenly sweet extent. They speak to me as if I’ll break, or shatter. I’m not made of glass, but they refuse to accept this. It puts me off, so I just stop going all together. 

Sae sometimes comes round to check that I’m eating, which I am, but I get the feeling that she’s annoyed at me. When I tell her to stop coming, she does. I think the only person who I actually talk to nowadays is Haymitch, but neither of us are conversationalists, so we mostly sit in silence. Sometimes I think I might be spending too much time with him, because my visits are starting to feel like I’m looking into a mirror. Or taking a look at my future. I guess there’s still Buttercup, but he isn’t much of a talker either, so I find myself singing to him and myself, just for something to do.

The leaves continue to fall, and time moves forward at a snail’s pace. I still wake screaming from nightmares, but no one comes running. Not anymore. I know the small number of people still living in Victor's Village can hear me. They duck their heads and avert their eyes when I walk past them. They don’t understand. They won’t ever understand. The only person who does, is busy with a new hobby. One that doesn’t include me, one that can never include me. I know that whilst I sit on Haymitch’s porch, drinking and trying to forget, they’re in his house doing God knows what. Whenever I think about it though, it makes me squirm. 

I think there might be a part of Peeta that’s doing this for my benefit. They come out onto the porch sometimes. Laughing unnaturally loud, movements exaggerated, until they suddenly start kissing. Kissing in a way I only ever got to do once, on a beach, in an arena, the smell of death permeating the air, with the whole country watching. Now I get to watch, whilst my stomach twists angrily, and I turn green with envy. It isn’t right. I don’t know what Haymitch really thinks of it, but when this happens, he tells them to scram and stop ruining the peace and quiet.

She comes and goes. Sometimes she leaves in the dead of night, lips pursed in what I can only see as being frustration. I’ll see them working in the garden, hands touching and eyes locking. I learn that she’s scared of cats, or doesn’t like them, because as soon as Buttercup makes an appearance she shrieks and runs into the house. Peeta almost looks amused. I certainly was, so after that I make sure that Buttercup knows that he is encouraged to go over there and give her a scare as often as possible. 

I’m not really proud of my actions though, and messing with her seems unfair. I soon tire of it. Instead, I wander the district, studiously avoiding people, and always making my way back to my childhood home. The people haven’t even started building new houses in the Seam. It looks like a forgotten hell. It is a forgotten hell, I see the way people circum-navigate it. They want to forget. I don’t, I won’t allow myself to. It seems Peeta does, though, because he’s the one I watch the most, and he won’t come anywhere near the place. I find it fitting, he’s finally learned that a Seam girl like myself couldn’t ever deserve someone like him. I talk to Haymitch about it, but all he has to say on the matter is that the boy doesn’t know what he’s doing. That he’s trying to forget and remember at the same time. I can’t help but wonder if he’s trying to forget me.

* * *

_Say_

_Isn’t it strange?_

_Isn’t it strange?_

_You look at me_

_I look at you_

_With nothing to say_

_Isn’t it strange?_

_How people can change_

_From strangers to friends_

_Friends into lovers_

_And strangers again_

**Winter**

I was right about it being a harsh Winter to come. We’ve already been snowed in once, and even the thick walls of my house can’t keep the frigid cold out. My only company now is the stupid cat, and he’s just as miserable as I am. I find myself singing, sometimes just humming, to the cat and to myself to lift the crushing silence that now envelopes my home. _She_ is long gone, apparently she wasn’t fond enough of Peeta to stick out our harsh winters. Haymitch says these are just excuses for the real reasons, but when I press him on it, he falls silent. Maybe he couldn’t forget me. I think that might be a bad thing, because as soon as I think thoughts like that, it feels like someone is pulling a rug out from underneath me. 

Most days I just sit in Prim’s room, with a sleeping Buttercup on my lap, sifting through all of her stuff. At first it felt like an invasion of her privacy, to read and look through her stuff like that. But I feel like if I don’t, I might forget her. Might forget who I did all this for, why everything turned out the way it did. The thought terrifies me, so every few days, without fail, I find myself sitting cross-legged on her floor, looking through her things, trying not to lose my mind, and avoiding looking at the painting. 

I don’t really have anything better to do. The woods are a no-go, Haymitch actually banned me from going there when I came back with fingers and toes so cold they had gone blue. I think a part of him is also afraid I might leave again. He spent the rest of Autumn trying to entertain me. He gave me things to do, so I wouldn’t scarper again. So I’m officially not allowed to go into the woods until spring returns. I don’t know why I’m actually listening to Haymitch, but I feel like I might owe him. I do owe him, I owe him so much more than my life. I owe him my sanity.

In the meantime, I have taken up Haymitch’s talent for heavy drinking. I’ve spent many an evening, slumped over my kitchen table, trying to drink away the happy and unhappy memories alike. I’m trying to find that numbness that I used to have, so maybe I don’t have to feel so much pain anymore. 

I don’t dare go outside anymore, not since I found him shovelling the snow on my pavement. When it happened, I stood frozen on my doorstep, not saying a word, unbearably ashamed and embarrassed for what I had done in the summer. I feel like maybe I should finally apologise, but we have had a total of one conversation since he returned to District Twelve, and I don’t really know how to bridge the gaping cracks in our relationship, whatever that is.

After it happened, I sat at the kitchen table for a while, contemplating how easily we have gone back to how things were between us after our first games. Except this time, we haven’t exchanged a single word. I realise I’m starting to forget what his voice sounds like. The thought makes me feel empty, emptier than ever before. 

It’s weird having two of the people you care about most in this world live so close, and yet feel so isolated and alone. Haymitch and I have never been big talkers, so whenever I do venture over to his, I know that I won’t be having any in-depth conversations. The only connection I do have to the outside world are the letters I’m receiving. 

They’ve started to come in hundreds, piling up at my front door, left unopened. I find it quite amusing that I sit here all alone everyday and complain about the loneliness, but when people try to reach out to me, I just leave their letters piling on my floor until I need to start a fire. 

Every evening, I sit on my living room floor, feeding these letters to the flames, not bothering to check who or where these letters are coming from. 

When people begin to realise that their letters aren’t reaching me, or that I’m not reading them, they begin to call me. It’s shrill ring fills the house for hours on end before I finally rip it out of the wall. It’s better that way. If I’m unreachable, then I can also stop hurting people. I’m a selfish creature, lonely and probably suffering from some form of depression, but still bent on survival at any cost. 

When Haymitch comes to see me one evening, to check I’m still alive I assume, he laughs at what I’ve done to my phone, and grumbles something about needing to do that to his own when he gets back. He doesn’t say a word when he sees that I’m feeding the mammoth amount of letters to the fire, he just awkwardly pats me on the shoulder before nestling himself in an armchair, and drinking from his flask. I can’t help but think that we’re fucked. It makes me smile.

This goes on for weeks. Haymitch wanders in and out of my house, and Buttercup brings me mice. I drink, feed letters to a fire, and sing to an empty house. This is my life now. Though I sometimes find my circumstance unbearably unfair, I know that I chose this for myself. I can continue blaming Snow and Coin for my losses, Gale for my bouts of depression, my mother for my unwillingness to trust, Haymitch for my drinking issues, Peeta for my loneliness. But this is me, this is who I am without good people surrounding me, this is who I am underneath all my facades and pretty dresses and costumes, underneath the vapid love stories, suits of armour and scripted propos. And oddly, I’m at peace with this. I’m an awful human being; sullen, unpredictable, violent, murderous, and completely and utterly in need of saving. 

When he traipses into my house, his lumbering gait so loud in the silence, we’d been snowed in for a week. He tells me something about being worried that I hadn’t eaten, I shrug my shoulders and continue to stare into the flames devouring the thick paper. These snow storms have started to affect me. I can feel myself going slowly insane, feeling emptier and more and more devoid of emotion each day.

When he sits himself beside me, and hands me a chunk of warm bread, I try to eat as slowly as possible. He's right, I’ve gone without food for the past day or two. I was caught out by the sudden blizzard, and tried to ration the rest of my food out, but when it came to day four and it still hadn’t let up, I accepted that I might finally starve to death. As I eat he whispers that he heard me sing. I don’t say anything. I don’t recall singing, but maybe I did and didn’t even realise it.

He doesn’t leave, not even when I’ve eaten the whole loaf of bread. He just stays seated next to me. As I feed the last of the letters to the fire, I find that I’ve awkwardly leaned myself into him, neither of us move for a moment, and then finally Peeta wraps his arm around me. It hurts that I still feel like a cold shell, even when he’s wrapped his arm around me, because I thought that if anyone could make me start feeling something, _anything,_ again - it would be him. It stings because it feels like after all this time, he might be forcing himself to do this. Forcing himself into showing me any sort of affection or comfort. It makes me wonder if I really look that pitiful to him. I can’t bring myself to move away though. Maybe I am that desperate for any contact with a human other than myself and Haymitch. I disgust myself all of the time, but I can’t help but use Peeta for this little scrap of comfort and warmth he’s giving me, so I decide to be the one to say something to him first. It’ll be the first I’ve spoken to him in almost a year, and I want to say something meaningful, but all I come up with is:

“It’s all so strange, isn’t it?” 

I say it so quietly I’m not sure he even hears it, but then he nods. Maybe it isn’t strange, maybe he’s been feeling just as confused and angry as I have, maybe this is just us starting from square one again. Starting from the beginning. The thought of that being the case coaxes the smallest of flames to unfurl in me.

Everything is finally exactly where it’s meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed please leave some kudos and a comment, if not leave a comment anyway. I honestly don't mind, just make sure the criticism is constructive. That's all my loves.


End file.
